How to make unpaid mat leave fair with DP?

[Fairpay]

Hi all, I have a 5 month old DS (first child) with my DH. We have similar jobs with similar pay - he earns about 10% more than me but followint my next pay review shortly that gap may narrow.

I’m on mat leave at the moment and get 6 months paid, 3 months SMP and 3
months unpaid.

We jointly own the house and pay the mortgage 50/50 though I own a greater share for now as I contributed more of the deposit. All bills are split 50/50 from our joint account.

My question is - for those with DPs and children, what arrangements did you make during mat leave to make the unpaid bit fair? Should we say he’s saving £X per month on childcare and so shoud give me the equivalent amount, or half of that? Or he should pay my share of the mortgage and bills for three months? And so increase his share of the house more quickly during that period?

I appreciate this depends in part on the sums involved, but I’m interested to get a sense of what other people did.

FWIW, this isn’t a situation where he is unwilling to pay! I read so many posts about crap partners like that on here. He is very much a 50/50 parent and wants to do what’s right and fair, but we can’t quite work out what that looks like!

Thank you!

Assuming you’re married he wouldn’t be increasing his share of the property by paying more of the mortgage during that period though - it’s a shared marital asset.

Sorry OP, this is all a bit alien to me as we have always shared money from one joint pot.

I suppose you could take your monthly joint income in that time, divide it in two then each pay half the mortgage from that. But it all sounds dreadfully complex. Surely you are a family so it’s all a bit irrelevant?

All the money in the pot. Split 50/50 whats leftover after bills, childcare, food etc.
Equal spending money and equal leisure time.

We’ve always made sure we have the same amount of ‘pocket money’ each and everything else goes into the joint account.

I've never felt comfortable going completely joint for various reasons - on the year I took for maternity, on average I got half pay for 12 months and we were on the same sort of salary, so my partner paid 2/3 of the bills and I paid 1/3. It sounded fair, but actually I ended up with less spare money left each month and had more expenses (because I was taking the baby out to do stuff), so it's fairer to split things out so you both have the same amount of spending money each.

When on maternity leave my dd paid her half of mortgage for the paid bit, then when went down to SMP which is very little her DH paid mortgage as she was doing childcare. Once she went back to work they went back to paying half mortgage each and half childcare each. They own house 50:50 and put equal deposit down. Her DH earns more so he pays council tax and water rates. Rest of bills including food are shared. They have joint account for bills but both have their own personal accounts.

Actually I’ve just remembered that for DC2 we did shared parental leave and DH did the last 3 unpaid months. Never in a million years did it occur to me that he should independently ‘save up’ for this nor that my salary covering the bills would give me more equity in our home.

Incidentally he found it really tough and was quite glad to get back to work - so a good lesson in ‘fairness’

Thanks all for your replies! I should clarify for a few people who missed it - we do have a joint account! But I’m really struck by how many people apparently pool all their income into one joint account. Maybe the difference is just the order in which payments and transfers are made though..?

We both have things set up so that our respective salaries go into our respective current accounts, then standing orders are set up for us each to transfer £X each (an equal amount) to our joint account, which covers mortgage, bills, food, everything for baby, meals out, holidays - basically everything we do jointly together! But if I go for lunch with a friend or get my nails done, I wouldn’t use the joint account for that! That comes out of what is left in my current account. Similarly I don’t want and he doesn’t expect me to pay for his golf lessons! Yes we are married, so everything that relates to our family life should be (and is) paid from our pooled money, but we don’t have to pool everything just because we’re married..? We still have individual interests and hobbies outside our married and family life!

As it happens, there isn’t a big gap in our salaries, but if there were, I’m not sure it would sit quite right with me for us to treat all our money as joint. What if the much lower earner had far more frivolous and extravagant taste?!

Also, to be clear, this isn’t me feeling awkward about spending “his” money on treats for myself - I’m actually likely to be the higher earner in a few years time, at which point I would expect to pay the mortgage and bills in proportion with what we each earn. Ditto holidays and anything else we do jointly together. But I don’t think I’d be giving him free rein with my hard earned money for everything else. As it goes, he’s frugal and not a d**k, so could be trusted with it, but it just seems a bit odd to treat it all as family money?

I’m gone off on a massive tangent, sorry! It’s all quite interesting to read the different views. Lots of food for thought.

@TheUndoing We hold the house as tenants in common, not joint tenants, and the split is 75% me and 25% him, reflecting our respective contributions to the deposit. We’re paying the same amount towards the mortgage so over time he will very gradually close the gap.

For those who queried why he would get a bigger share in the house as a result of covering my mortgage payments for three months, I totally see that point and the principle, but I also can’t quite summon the energy to care about the negligible increase he would get with three months of mortgage payments in the context of a 30 year mortgage.. But maybe I need to give that more thought.

So you do a bit of admin and pay both salaries into one joint account and then move all your joint bills and spending tocome out of that account. You then have an equal amount of spending money each per month, say £300 each for example or whatever amount you choose that transfers into your personal accounts for your own private spending.

Easy!

Another one who has pooled absolutely everything since married. We are effectively one person financially. To quote your examples, my nails and his golf lessons would all come out of the one pot, no questions asked. And this is despite a big disparity in earnings. The house is held equally, regardless of who put more deposit in originally, any inheritances go into the pot regardless of whose 'side' they came from. We're a partnership, I can't imagine doing it any other way!

Hopefully someone who splits finances like you will come along and give some advice on how to make it fair - starting point would definitely be you should in no way be disadvantaged for raising his baby...

This is what we do works well

In your example we do it slightly differently. Salaries go into joint account and savings, holidays, bills, mortgage, food and day to day spending come out of that.

we then both take an equal amount of personal spending money based on what’s left to do as we wish. So my nails and his golf would come
out of the persoanl

@D0lphine Now, ”pooing” money - that would be an excellent solution! 😂 But yes, see above - we do pool most of our money in our joint account and are definitely not living like flatmates - we don’t transfer money back and forth for small items to make things “square” or anything. But I don’t think marriage necessarily means we should treat all our personal spending money as joint. I don’t want to get my nails done or have a big evening out with a friend and worry that he’ll think I’m taking the P. He’s far too nice to say anything of course, but it wouldn’t sit right with me to be spending someone else’s money on frivolous stuff, even my husband’s.

We do as @Kitsmummy suggests.

This meant when I had unpaid maternity we looked at the whole household budget, reduced a few areas and each got a bit less spending money.

We both have separate hobbies and our own bank accounts. But our wages go I to the joint account and our spending money is paid out of the pooled pot thus preventing the problem you're foreseeing with your income.

Of course you could do shared parental leave for the last 6 weeks of your maternity - that way you both get 6 weeks unpaid leave.

@caringcarer This sounds very fair to me and is what we’re most likely to do I think.

Omg hilarious autocorrect.

Quite right very handy.

If you live in E&W there is no percentage that you own and he owns of the house now as you are married. If you were to split up that would be a joint marital asset to be allocated how to court decides if you couldn’t agree. So you need to ignore that in your thinking.

On the question you actually asked, I had a similar set up to you in that we had a joint account for bills but kept our own accounts. When I had DS when my maternity pay dropped my DP topped up the joint account to cover all the bills, then gave me an extra allowance of £500 a month towards my expenses until I went back to work when DS was a year old.

Hi Op, when I was on leave unpaid, my DH’s full salary went into our joint account- we considered that during that period, as he was the only earner, his full income was ‘joint.’ If he had personal expenses during that time (golf lessons etc) he used his savings. I did the same.

Typically we do the same as you- we have a joint account for joint expenses and separate account for personal expenses.

For some reason people get very judgey on here about that- there’s no reason you ‘should’ pool your income simply because you’re married. I can only imagine the amount of arguments it creates about the cost of golf lessons/ hair appointments/ etc.

Honestly, I think once married and with a family everything should be pooled, and you both have the same "spends" money each. I also think that the equity in the house should be split 50/50 regardless of who paid what on the deposit. You're one family unit with shared interests, not two singletons each looking out for your own interests.

If your going to do "what is mine is mine, what is his is his" then you need to continue to pay your full 50%, even if that means putting baby in childcare, going back to work and splitting the childcare cost so that you can afford it. Basically you're either one unit who shares what they have with each other, or you're two separate units who are financially responsible for paying their own half share of all costs in full.

I don’t understand this mentality- legally once you married it’s all shared, there is no such thing as individual money. If you divorce it will be counted as martial money/assets. Share everything and everyone gets what they need and some of what they want - this is a non issue surely? My H gets stuff he wants and I get stuff o want- it’s not always equal but evens out over time. I have no concerns of being frivolous with his money as it’s as much mine as his (and I’m the breadwinner!).

I don't get it...

Surely all money goes in one pot, all bills, expenses and consumables comes out of the same pot.

If anything's left you have a conversation about whether it goes into ssvings, home improvements, investments or a treat that one or both of you would like?

That's exactly what we do

I'm with you OP. My money is my money to do what I want with. Same with DH. I actually have no idea what he spends his money on and so long as his share of the bills and expenses is covered, I don't really care. My parents have been very happily married for over 40 years and don't even have a joint account. All their joint spending is managed via a spreadsheet (in the olden days, it used to be paper based - you can tell they're both accountants)

Exactly this